Nodes can be daunting if you’ve never used them before. In this video I try to explain some basics of how to use the Cycles material nodes to colour, overlay and combine a couple of different images using “factors” and also adding transparency.

Sometimes we would like to exclude or mask an area from being affected by texture painting. It’s possible to use the face masking button, however for more control it’s easy enough to paint or generate a second texture to mask the effect of the paint.

I really wasn’t sure what to call this shape. Hopefully the little techniques shown here will make it an interesting quick video, it’s quite an elegant shape I think. I realise the 3D cursor could have been placed closer before doing the warp, this would have given such result with the need to use the […]

Once completing one side of an armature it’s simple to copy the bones from one side to the other to complete the rig. Certain points of interest to make this work nicely is to observe proper naming conventions for the Left or Right sides respectively, make use of the Flip Names tool, and correct any […]

Here we take a look at how to set up Spline IK to deform a cylinder type mesh. This could be used to animate rope, pipes, tails, tentacles, objects along those lines. Firstly we create a rig to deform the cylinder nicely, and then use the curve to control the movements of those bones. A […]

Here I try to observe the way edges can be rounded out using the bevel tool, and also how to achieve this effect using subdivision surfaces. How to control subdivision surfaces with edge loops and topology to make smooth looking curves and surfaces and some things to be avoided.

Virtually everything in Blender can be referred to as a “Datablock” At times this behaviour can be confusing! Hopefully this video will demystify the Datablock concept somewhat. How to link datablocks between objects and how to unlink them and generally get a feel for what it’s all about.